Originating from Geelong, Australia, Matthew Liam Nicholson is a recording artist, songwriter, composer, and band leader. He currently resides in the Northern California mountains. The timeless art of Nicholson is rooted in a mysticism that is both grim and ecstatic. His music has been called “reverent, expansive, magical realist folk music” (Uncut) with a “clear, authorial voice” and has been described as “stretching the ethereality of dream-pop into blissout” (Pitchfork, 8.2). (Wire). His original songs have been used as placements and scores in movies and art installations all over the world. At/ALL, Function Ensemble, Outshine Family, and The Golden Lifestyle Band are a few of his previous bands. Nicholson has been slavishly working on several new albums for the past six years, alongside composition work in Los Angeles, some of which have just been finished. The first of these to be made available was “Nine Movements,” a 39-minute ambient instrumental immersive guided meditation that was recently named a hidden gem of 2021 by The Guardian. On May 20, 2022, Nicholson’s brand-new studio album, “Universal Outsider,” was made available.
Universal Outsider is a special portal that many will eventually discover and treasure. It was recorded and produced in Los Angeles over the past five years with gun co-producers and a musical ensemble.
Through an emotionally rich, multidimensional, poetic suite of songs, Nicholson expands his mystical, cinematic approach in catchy pop-psychedelics and contemporary folk-rock meditations. “Universal Outsider” is a timeless classic album that is both rocking and calming, ethereal and muscular. Check out the video and the exclusive interview below:
1. Can you tell us a bit about where you come from and how you got started?
MATTHEW LIAM NICHOLSON:
I was born in Geelong, Australia. As to where I come from, I hope to find out when the motherships arrive. I got started in music early, running guitar bands with friends during highschool. Twas a fertile time for indie punk music kids in the 90s, very noisy. Many bands, many shows, much fun & silliness. Thereafter I started to drift from Australia to US & UK, recorded and toured as Function for a while. Geelong had a thriving music scene in the 90s. King Gizzard are partly from there – I hear them as a delightful evolution of the psych rock culture we grew up in, which was kind of positively competitive due to so many good bands in an area raising the bar for each other.
2. Did you have any formal training or are you self-taught?
MATTHEW LIAM NICHOLSON:
Mostly self-taught, though learned piano formally when young. I’ve always experimented with things and found out for myself – and I learn from most everyone I work with. I have always loved to learn on the fly, on the job, so there is much osmosis and sharing active in my collaborative nature, I’m fortunate to have worked with many exceptionally gifted musicians, film makers & artists on a wide range of projects. It’s interesting to witness how meeting certain talents at certain times coincides within my own ever developing understanding of music/universe.
3. Who were your first and strongest musical influences and why the name ‘MATTHEW LIAM NICHOLSON’?
MATTHEW LIAM NICHOLSON:
Earliest influences heard in the home when growing up included of course 80s pop, 60s & 70s folk rock, 90s indie & experimental rock – and I would explore & have my small mind blown by the strange transmissions of global short wave radio. And of course tons of horrid and laughable stuff to look back on now! But its funny how the good stuff sticks around.
I’ve played under a few different names (Function, Function Ensemble, AT/ALL, Outshine Family, The Golden Lifestyle Band…)
After moving to LA and starting a new phase in recent years I decided to just start using my own real name for releases, it’s unlikely to change, unlike everything else. I intend to rack up quite a catalog of releases over the coming years.
4. What do you feel are the key elements in your music that should resonate with listeners, and how would you personally describe your sound?
MATTHEW LIAM NICHOLSON:
Resonate and feel are the words indeed. Everything is frequency, my work flies right past some, while others are having epiphanies. So fundamentally it’s the energetic signature of the music that people will connect with or not. Someone described it today as mystic art rock – that sounds nice, whatever.
I’m always uneasy describing my sound – it’s become a bit of a joke – the very impulse to create music is also to transcend linear reductive description. Which is why I leave it to writers & music lovers to describe better than I can.
I pretty much always feel and sound stupid and pretentious when tying words together to try to externalize my own experience of the music. Everyone is free to have at it. I’m going to keep making music that I can’t very well describe ;-)
MATTHEW LIAM NICHOLSON:
In early days it’d be fair enough to say we had identifiable heroes – The Wipers & The Melvins are good examples that stand tall today. I’ve been doing this long enough to have outgrown emulating anyone a while ago, as far as I’m aware. I do however greatly admire many contemporary artists and am jawdropped and inspired & challenged by their work.
Using my own name in recent times signifies a certain kind of transition into what I consider the beginning of the adulthood of my eternal childhood of making music. What is to come, contains numerous distinct evolutions of anything I’ve done previously.
6. What’s your view on the role and function of music as political, cultural, spiritual, and/or social vehicles – and do you try and affront any of these themes in your work, or are you purely interested in music as an expression of technical artistry, personal narrative and entertainment?
MATTHEW LIAM NICHOLSON:
Glad you asked, haha. IMO music is absolutely central to creation of true culture and a mirror of a culture’s spirituality or lack thereof. Always has been, always will be.
Sometimes when experiencing the power of a great composer brilliantly utilizing a full orchestra, I pontificate that the orchestra is our highest civilizational achievement. It feels that way, such a sophisticated and co-operative eventuation by and for people, which can evoke greater trans-personal realities & states everyone can share via the music.
Music for me is primarily a vehicle for the communication of that which cannot be conveyed in words and shall always remain beyond words – and of course the musical arts bleeding into pop culture is a good place for many verbal-musical-song communications to be made. I’m moving into a “focus on lyrics for a while” phase actually..
Music for me is definitely primary – though I adore great poetry and song form – for they also recognize the limitation of words – and there are realms of feeling, meaning, being, loveliness, bliss, understanding, peace, enjoyment & happiness that transcend the verbal-metal entirely, which I have always been interested to explore via music & sound.
Music is a healing force and can be used in many ways. We’ve been doing some sound baths in recent years, blasting horizontal people with my ambient instrumental meditative compositions & live instrumentation, have had some remarkable feedback, looks like doing this again soon.
7. Do you feel that your music is giving you back just as much fulfilment as the amount of work you are putting into it, or are you expecting something more, or different in the future?
MATTHEW LIAM NICHOLSON:
The process of creating music is in some real sense is its own reward, the process of creation I enjoy very much – and always kinda grew up & stayed with with the art punk ethos of if it aint worth doing out of passion, it aint worth doing / corporate music sucks etc.
But certainly it has been a challenging dance to support myself over the years & manifest what I do. Part of the video game I guess, needs a score ;-)
I can’t help but think big when it comes to musical ideas, so having the support of a label or such in future may be useful to get the word out further and assist me making killer records consistently.
We’ll see. I could just disappear to Shambhala or such. Just imagine what an orchestra looks, sounds and feels like in the advanced civilizations of the Pleaides. What jams do the Sirians bring? Does heavy metal come from Orion (lol)? How is sound used throughout the universe. This is the stuff I think about and research.
8. Could you describe your creative processes? How do usually start, and go about shaping ideas into a completed song? Do you usually start with a tune, a beat, or a narrative in your head? And do you collaborate with others in this process?
MATTHEW LIAM NICHOLSON:
Anything can be a starting point. Presently I’m developing a lot of piano-based works & songs, and really enjoying playing piano again after not having one for some years. I do a lot of score work and that can start almost anywhere – usually with a combination of the director’s vision and my intuitive support of it. Doing that a lot has sharpened my tools. Sometimes a lyric, sometimes a melody, sometimes a song comes seemingly already written. Sometimes many synth layers & electronic layers & textures. Sometimes sculpting melodies & layers quite intentionally, sometimes letting crazy improv magic coincide as it does. Yeah, can start anywhere. And yes I love collaborating with other musicians, artists and film makers & have done lots. It takes a village, though I do work in isolation more than I used to at least at this post-pandemic point. That’ll probably change.
9. What has been the most difficult thing you’ve had to endure in your life or music career so far?
MATTHEW LIAM NICHOLSON:
Aside from a traumatic birth, deaths of loved ones, remaining alive as a music freelancer for over a decade, sciatica, addiction, planet earth being constantly raped by empire, artist-personalities as vectors for vampiric corporations, the world being slowly taken over by AI, the constant reality of mortality and the futility of seemingly everything – I’d have to say the music industry. lol. No, my own ego takes the cake.
10. On the contrary, what would you consider a successful, proud or significant point in your life or music career so far?
MATTHEW LIAM NICHOLSON:
Hearing from friends and fans who have been positively impacted by my music is quite wonderful, it lights me up.
Getting listed first on “Hidden gems – top albums you may have missed in 2021” by The Observer / Guardian for my instrumental/sound bath album “Nine Movements” was sweet. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/dec/18/hidden-gems-2021-great-albums-you-may-have-missed
One of my scores was on loop for 3 months in the Bargello National Museum in Florence, Italy for “The Ascent of Orpheus” – accompanying the art of Adi Da Samraj – artist, author, spiritual teacher, who I was extremely blessed to spend time with while he was alive. https://www.theascentoforpheus.org/
Visiting Tribeca film festival for the premiere of my first feature film score CRSHD was fun.
Mostly I’m glad to be alive and in a good place with love and nature around me, where I have a lovely little studio by a creek where I intend to develop and complete some of the volumes of ideas and projects I’m working on – and consistently release stuff for the first time ever! After everything thus far, I feel I’m at the beginning of what I want to create.
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Photo credits: peter kagan, michelle hodnett